Bigfoot in popular culture


Bigfoot or Sasquatch is an alleged ape-like creature purportedly inhabiting forests, mainly in the Pacific Northwest region of North America. More than fifty years have passed since the first supposed sightings of Bigfoot were reported in California. The character of Bigfoot has been used frequently in popular culture including film, TV, advertising, and literature. Bigfoot has also been the subject of several tourism campaigns.

Advertising

"Bigfoot" and "Sasquatch" are pop culture terms that have been used in advertising across many different products and services, such as pizzas, beef jerky, skateboards, skis, an Internet search engine, a computer hard drive series, gas stations, Kokanee beer, Bigfoot Shadows award winning wine and a monster truck.
passed a law regarding Bigfoot in 1969 declaring that "any willful, wanton slaying of such creatures shall be deemed a felony" subject to substantial fine and/or imprisonment. The fact that this legislation was passed on April 1 did not escape notice, but County Commissioner Conrad Lundy said that "this is not an April Fool's Day joke... there is reason to believe such an animal exists." The ordinance was amended in 1984 to preclude an insanity defense and to consider such a killing homicide if the creature was proven by the coroner to be humanoid.
In response to Al Magnussen from the Mt. Baker Chamber of Commerce, Whatcom County, Washington, an Agenda Bill was drafted on 6/9/91, which unanimously passed a resolution declaring Whatcom County a Sasquatch Protection and Refuge Area.
The Skamania County ordinance explicitly calls out hunter-on-hunter violence as a possibility, while also speculating on whether Bigfoot is a subspecies of homo sapiens.

Literature

Many have written on the subject, demonstrating a broad spectrum of approaches from a small body of serious scholarly work to lurid tabloids, such as the Weekly World News. The Gwaii, published by Arcana Studio, is an award winning children's graphic novel that features a sasquatch named Tanu searching for his mother and tribe in the Canadian wilderness. John Prufrock, the hero of the comic book Proof, is a Bigfoot who works for a secret agency that hunts and captures other cryptids. The comic, an ongoing series, was written by Alex Grecian and illustrated by Riley Rossmo. It was published in Image Comics from October 2007 to May 2011. "Donations to Clarity", a 2011 novel by Noah Baird, tells the story of a Bigfoot who falls in love with a Bigfoot hoaxer. The Sasquatch appears in the Italian comic series Tex and Martin Mystère. In the non-canon Star Wars Tales comic "Into the Great Unknown" - in which the Millennium Falcon, after a blind hyperspace jump, crash-lands on what appears to be Endor but is in fact the Pacific Northwest around the time of Lewis and Clark, resulting in Han Solo's death at the hands of the natives and the eventual discovery of his body by Indiana Jones - "Sasquatch" is actually Chewbacca. One of the main characters from the Canadian Marvel Comics superhero team Alpha Flight is Sasquatch.
Famed alternate history author Harry Turtledove has written stories as part of the "State of Jefferson Stories" titled "Visitor from the East", "Peace is Better", "Typecasting" and "Three Men and a Sasquatch" where Sasquatches, Yetis and other related cryptids are real. However, unlike common popular depictions of such creatures as less evolved primates, they are essentially another race of human beings, and have been integrated into society.
The version of Bigfoot appearing in A Goofy Movie reappears in the comic strip "Picture Perfect" of the Brandon J. Santigo webcomic Erma, playing with Erma Williams, the series' title character. The series is published in conjunction with Outcast Studios. In the poem "Satch" by Jeannette Allée, Bigfoot is a metaphor for how individuals childishly hide from their own talents, desires, love. In the SCP Foundation mythos, the Bigfoot creature is classified as SCP-1000.
Sasquatch Books is the largest publishing house in the Pacific Northwest. Its logo features a Sasquatch paw print.

Music

Bigfoot has been addressed in American song and music, with both songs written about and by Bigfoot enthusiasts, as well as music incorporating what are claimed to be or supposed to be recordings of Bigfoot sounds made in nature.
The song "Bigfoot" by the Winnipeg indie-rock band The Weakerthans is about the frustration and humiliation of a man who is purported to have seen a Bigfoot.
The pop punk band Groovie Ghoulies performed a song about Bigfoot called "Running with Bigfoot".

Podcasts

Sasquatched! The Musical is a musical play written and composed by Minnesota native Phil Darg in 2012. It follows the story of a gentle, dignified talking Sasquatch named Arthur, his interactions with the human characters of the surrounding Pacific Northwest area, and the issues revolving around Sasquatch-human relations. The style of the play is humorous, fast-moving, and family-friendly. The play was submitted as an entry to the New York Musical Theatre Festival in September 2012. In February, it was chosen as one of NYMF's Next Link selections and later received an award from the Anna Sosenko Assist Trust. In July 2013, the show was performed as part of NYMF at the Pearl Theatre in New York City.

Tourism

There are annual Bigfoot-related conventions, and the creature plays a role in Pacific Northwest tourism, such as the annual "Sasquatch Daze" held for several years in Harrison Hot Springs, British Columbia and the Oregon Bigfoot Festival held in Troutdale Oregon which draws thousands in attendance from all over.
Primatologist and Bigfoot researcher John Napier commented on this, stating that "Bigfoot in some quarters of North America has become big business... It can no longer be considered simply as a natural phenomenon that can be studied with the techniques of a naturalist; the entrepreneurs have moved in and folklore has become fakelore."

Other

Among the various characters associated with Chuck E. Cheese's is a Sasquatch named Nigel.